The Alizarine King
by Calesvol
Summary: This is a collaborative effort between abz-j-harding and myself that explores her Lovecraftian Doctor Strange concept, and the discombobulated, disturbing, and horrific road the Sorcerer Supreme has taken in lieu of selling his soul. With gods Old and new conforming and coming into creation, a new mythos will be forged and reality shaken from the throne of the Alizarine King.
1. The Coronation of the King

( **Warning(s]** : Graphic body horror]

* * *

 _Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of the Lord; awake, as in days of old, the generations of long ago.  
Was it not you who cut Rahab in pieces, who pierced the dragon?_  
\- Isaiah 51:9

 _ **You consume fire in its breadth and so shall hell fire yield  
to the turbulence you endure. Where God built his Church  
upon sand did you construct yours upon sand. Devouring  
the feeble rays of the sun, the evils and monstrosities of  
the world paid no equal. This is not the sin of Icarus; this  
is the vanity of man who believed himself greater than the  
Lord, and so were you marked. Upon ten horns were the  
blasphemies of your atrocities committed and upon seven  
facets of the self were the sins carved irrevocably. For you  
will be made to forget, plumed once in the feathery virtue  
of St. Michael and told the secrets of the earth, whispered  
into the depth of your heart when the place of one was taken,  
his legacy gifted into the soul scorched anew. A sun burnt in  
your chest, once, scalded away the frays of doubt and erased  
them from mind and hearth. Strength knew you by name and  
nobility was a blessing you could bear upon all by merest want  
of action. But where is it? Who snuffed the very sun from the sky?**_

* * *

Words riddle his mind. It's a turbulence of thought, a cold heat that plunges rationale into a sear of pain. He had been dreaming. A lucidity, something surreal and real. It tastes of the warmth of a spring's breeze, a fragrance light and permeates the senses with an aching gentility. A hand touches him in this dream; cups the angular planes and strokes along facial hair, he committing it to memory. They are small, they are delicate, and no other sensation equals to him a greater breath of relief. Once he had doubted his worth to her, a tentative opening of a heart made chill. Silvern hair that had stuffed his senses with softness and fragrance during nights and days of intimacy and love and want. He had smiled and so did she. Paramour, wife, lover. For thousands of years they had lived in it, reveled and more.

He breathes. The air is not sweet and it is heavy and clings to a foul musk. Nostrils flare, and adrenaline seizes him. Something writhes in the shadows, and Stephen Strange starts awake, jaws gnashing and the click of fangs– _No_. A trembling seizes him, bitter and cold and desolate, devoid of warmth and sanctity. Awareness broadens, and scantily does his mind wonder if he has been entrapped with a demon, some old fade of a memory– Again. Skittering, moving with a serpentine independence, but something feels wrong.

" _Clea–_ " His voice is a cruel rasp, a jagged serration against the pall of silence, Stephen gaping. The voice is not his own. The words are. He thought them, precognition, the barest interlude before they are spoken. By the Vishanti, he reels. His awareness awakens, and the tentacles move again, sucking and clinging and grasping like hands and fingers, broadening. The light is sick. It is wan and yellowed like the illness of a moon overwrought with a plague.

 _Where is she_? The immediacy of his thoughts dart to her, obsess over her. Bestial cranium with horns flame to the beginnings of white, scintillating so rapidly to black that it breeds an ache that blossoms into pain. Flaring claret finally opens, acknowledging, a realization that brews poison and tonic in his breast. He thinks an ocean capsizes blood and poison and ink, observing in anger frozen in a wintery heat upon the hands that greet his vision, calloused and gnarled like bark, erosion scrambling the vanes of once human flesh. Talons grit the tips of his fingers, and these cannot be the hands that once held her.

Persecutions brim his lips and blame unfurls in mind, a sickness, a warbling accusation that screams his name and condemns him to hell and fire. They seek, claw, clamor, bestial deprivation that unfurls from the seams of sanity. Her voice had been a beautiful melody, a placation that brought solace from the sorrow. Stephen knows not what he has become, but knows how it came to be. The vanity of Icarus and wickedness of Adam are planted within the morrow of his bones and his mind plays a wicked tune, seeking, straining.

"How long do you think he'll have to remain here, Stark?" …Rogers? Captain America? Strain, strain, crane higher, blearily does he crave knowledge of its source; not of damnable omnipresence!

"…Do we really wanna answer that? SHIELD's got its hands full enough with just keeping him contained. A powerhouse like that–he has to remain sedated. Crap, even now they're wearing off." Stark. Colloquial, unrefined, a hellion's impulsive genius.

Weakness. Greater voices, the omnipotence of the gods and deities he had called upon were negated, silent. The flux and brandish of his sorcery is stifled, raining silence and suppression he cannot break. Higher planes, other realities, all that passed and an awareness unrivaled became nothingness and quiescence. War drums trilled in his chest and battle in his body derailed the Sorcerer Supreme.

"Where is she…" They start at his voice, a hovel in the place of once-elegance and power. Body keels, momentous weight a cavernous dissonance as he collapses, the tranquilization of cognitive scope and stultification of momentum reduces him to a crawling entity, talons digging into the pitched shriek of metal as they puncture through, hauling the morass of a humanoid reminiscence and the eldritch abomination it is affixed to. Rage flares, hot, something colder keening his chest, fangs grit hot and close.

A succession of thunks, a crawl bestial and primordial, a clawing loneliness filling his chest hot with hate and want and desire. Before strength gives way, before more sedation weakens and robs him, he will glower into where he knows they observe him like an animal.

Sounds choke from his chest, squeezing in agony as he maunders sickly for the words that will not come, moisture building in his eyes that sizzle from their own heat, wet and steaming from betrayal and persecution. It builds, volcanic, a bellow that would shake them to their very core for the one woman Stephen cared for when there was none else in the immediacy of clogged thoughts:

 **ＷＨＥＲＥ ＩＳ ＭＹ ＷＩＦＥ** **?!**

* * *

 **Last thoughts** : I would like to cordially welcome you to the first installment of **The Alizarine King**. The Alizarine King is a crossover, AU concept for Stephen Strange that explores the idea of what had become of him after he sold his soul and was beginning to succumb to these demonic powers. But, what if something else got old? What if the Old Gods and Elder Things of Lovecraftian horror found him and transformed him, realizing that the enormity of his power would pose a threat to them?

Essentially, these disconnected yet intertwined drabbles and one-shots hope to explore just that. **abz-j-harding** (her tumblr URL name, btw] has been working on the Alizarine Project (okay, that admittedly my own name for it] for the better part of a year now, and it's really something! I've only gotten into it a few months ago, but collaborating together on scenarios, headcanons, and situations, together we've created art and stories that are rapidly expanding into one helluva an AU. Maybe even enough to call it an AU? Who knows, but we promise you that this is just the beginning.~

 **~Peace, G.**


	2. The Making of the King

( **Warning(s]** : Graphic body horror]

* * *

It had begun as a black and vile substance that seethes from the pith of his chest, tar that blackened his teeth and tightened his esophagus with a caulk that could not remove itself no matter how much he'd coughed, hacked, sagged beneath the outcome of potions and pultuces and spells of which had little effect. Wong was beguiled into believing it was but a skirmish in the beyond, within realms nightmarish and monstrous that had rendered him to but a momentary semblance of weakness. A lapse that would pass in transpiration like all the others. Scar-stained hands revealed only in the intimacy of friendship would be offered in placation, Wong unable to do aught else but comply skeptically.

His body was committing reason against him. The Sorcerer Supreme brimmed with a supernatural malevolence in the depths of him, of something that had started but could not be stopped. For humanity he'd sold his soul. For humanity he'd relinquished a former life to facilitate its absolute protection. He, the buffer between worlds and monstrous divinity that might seek to wreak havoc upon the Earth–was this something even the Eye of Agamotto could not have foreseen.

In the train of thought was it derailed in a hurdling violence, the Sorcerer Supreme keeled over from his place within the bowels of his chambers, plummeting from the anchor of a bed once shared and now emptied of occupation save for himself, feet pedaling for purchase as he leaned and roiled like the eternal chaos of the turmoil of the stormy sea. Hands shaken gripped the wooden threshold leading into the bathroom, a heaviness clinging to his chest that sundered his balance.

"What's–what's going on?" Stephen's voice stumbled, staggering from a parched throat as the man felt gooseflesh boil upon his skin, growing gnarled, flesh discoloring a sickening pallor. Something writhed beneath, as though serpents and insects that elicited a squelch of skin rippling and coiling. As though his very veins were alive and creating a stream within. But he couldn't let Wong see, he couldn't–

A cry broke from his throat this time, doubling over in a sublimity of pain and agony, bones crackling from the hearth of his chest and his spine snapping and distorting beneath its fleshed housing. A crippling wave of it surged throughout him, he wanting nothing more than to retract into the deepest parts of his being whilst–NOTHING COULD COMPARE TO THIS!

 **AGONY, ALL HE COULD**  
 **PERCEIVE WAS A WAKELESS,**  
 **TEARING FROM HIS BODY,**  
 **RECALLING HIM, RECANTING HIM–**

It burst from his arched back, flesh swimming sickly as it parted before tearing in grotesque recoil, blood spurting as bloodied vertebrae spiked and gored from his skin, menacing from his back as his robe tore seams and stains. He was blinded, Strange unable to cope as it was as his sight was robbed. His cranium boiled and Stephen's hands flew to mask his eyes from the sun that was erupting from them. He screams with as much as is left of his voice, a cacophonous and despairing sound that reverberated with the horror that was befalling him.

The man cannot gouge his eyes from his skull, cannot deafen himself, cannot tear tongue and vocal chords enough to cease the resplendence of such a terrible agony. Yet, his nails claw into his flesh and he begins to frantically shred it from his abdomen, ribbons and welts forming where it falls from his body like hot wax, Stephen agape and frozen in horror. He blanked even as his eyes were afire, skin shedding from the shell of his being as a wrinkled and gnarled hide flourished, pores wide and breathing. It falls, it peels, and he stands blearily, stands to run from it, a demon's voice murkily cloaking his erudite tonality, a human's voice morphing into a brusque and bestial mockery of it.

He falls calamitously and with such a great dissonance that he almost believes he falls into another unreality, scrambling upon the floor even as another labored seizure of paralysis takes him, eyes and posture wheeling as he claws and grapples with the floor and reality as it slips from his fingers, talons– His body heaves as he vomits and gurgles with the black tar from before, overflowing his mouth to pool thickly at his chin, continuously heaving and hacking until his body runs dry from it.

But, he cannot handle so much anymore. The Sorcerer Supreme collapses in such an impartial transformation, to awaken to what awaited.

A long and bleary haze awoke to him, rays of slatted sunlight filtering into his vision, spectral orbs of unholy fire snapping open to meet it in kind. A shuddering gasp started as his body uncoiled, nocturnal and bare awareness believing it to be serpents come to poison him with a deeper delirium. Lips parted to reveal deadly and bloodied serrations, a tongue that could only be described as an appendage snaking from his maw, unblinking eyes cracking upon it before closing as it furled back within his mouth.

His head felt heavier, the _swoosh_ of wind breaking past jagged horns, the Sorcerer snarling uncertainly at their manifestation. The third eye upon his forehead and at their crux was forever affixed to the heavens where They watched, Stephen shutting them out as realization curdled miserably in his veins. What he was was awesomely and fearfully made, even as the human and the monster slowly experienced a dissonance of severance, words slopping from his fangs like blood and as incoherent as dribbling rainfall.

Something built in the back of his throat, rage trembling in his heart and blood boiling blacker than what thickened in his veins. Nostrils flared and tongue flicked for a summation of what diffused in the air, lowering his head once more as his tentacles and unruly appendages furled into him in a single, heaving motion. Was he losing himself? Strange bit his tongue bitterly, a man in conscience for but a moment.

 _You are the Alazarine King now._

A scream that could deafen the whole of the cosmos tore from his throat.

* * *

 **Last Thoughts** : And here we have Stephen beginning his terrible transformation into the Alizarine King. While the first chapter set the stage for the overall premise of the Alizarine King, here we have him in his gruesome and terrible transformation. Pretty hardcore stuff, isn't it? Ah, if only you all knew...

More to come soon.~

 **~Peace, G.**


	3. The King's Cherished

( **Warning(s]** : Graphic body horror, explicit cannibalism, some disturbing imagery]

* * *

 **I AM NOT DONE**

Eyes saw universes; unseeing , scathing, scorching the tenebrous darkness that coiled about him in its lonely discord. There is something beautiful in his vision, alluring, starlight. Tentacles coil in their autonomous sentience, the sepia night that wound about him and they. He was not fully in control. The Alizarine King stabbed moonbeams with his gaze, harsh and hellion-cruel, proving it about with dim and distance. Strength was robbed, ferocity abated, humanity almost there as once-hands reach and talons skitter into the cool metal of his containment. Not bipedal, but upright, he moves against its cage. Something within him is riveted by desperation. All he can see is starlight and her divine embodiment; the abysmal void of space he's become craves her. Bestial cruelty is shorn for lucidity, and he pretends that he is the Sorcerer Supreme, the former, swaddled in nocturnal nakedness does he advance and take in this new world. Hearing the moonlight, tasting the darkness, seeing the clangorous scrape of his talons upon his confinement. He aches with hunger, aches with wanting, stabbed and pained by so many and too many things.

Nostrils flare with animistic query, neck craning and upper torso following with a single hand bracing his form whilst the other was blankly suspended, eyes wide and body slithering and coiling about itself as he sampled the air. Footsteps. Flesh. The Alizarine King smothered Strange once more, noting the narrow passage, the corridor in which they would inevitably be housed. Suction strong and talons impaling through metal for purchase, he hauled himself aloft, tentacles suspended downwards as he ascended into the rafters and coiled into a waiting predation. Footfalls echoed cavernously, nervous breaths misting as a man trekked in, hapless, the remote beam of a flashlight scanning the walls. The man jumped in palpable shock, gasping at the avulsions ferociously dug into the walls, at the substances belonging to an inhuman being. The wan beam of the flashlight trailed with increasing trepidation at the remnants of whatever had scaled it, their breath becoming quieter and more restrained with every foot gingerly assessed.

That was until it met a writhing morass of tentacles and the spark-bright trio of eyes mounted to a human face and skull with enormous horns spanning it. The mouth widened to inhumane proportions, fangs aglitter in the titian bio-luminescence, throat like the opening of a volcanic inferno. The tongue, of palpus appendages that twisted with blinking eyes and corrosive liquid that seeped from it, stared unblinkingly at the horror struck mortal. The flashlight dropped, reducing the monster above to a spectral sight of luminescent eyes, lightning-ignited, the male unable to move without the horrible sight that plagued his vision now. A foot pedaled backwards once, then he stumbled loudly, Stephen's eyes honed upon each movement with keen alacrity, rapacity that no human could emulate nor escape. A snarl tore from his throat, the Alizarine King lunging like a sprung coil and descending, an enclosure of tentacles condemning the man to an absolute oblivion.

Only the shoes were left behind, a blooming profusion of tentacles and writhing morass of them as the legs of the man twitched whilst life was drained, blood sputtering and slopping messily to the floor below. Within, clothes had been dissolved into sickly tar, skin dissolving and popping to reveal the aching flesh beneath. Fangs scrapped and wholly swallowed, chunks at once, devouring noisily and sloppily, bones crunching gravelly, limbs becoming stripped of their mortal mortar and constitution. The man himself was long dead, bones falling from place and to the floor, acid clinging and burbling orifices through calcium and marrow, reducing them to soupy white. Stephen devoured mindlessly, the squelch of organs and meats passing his palette and being swallowed whole, having no conception of what he was eating. All he knew was that it was sustenance, sorely needed. Burbling bones dropped; skulls, fibulae, femurs, rib bones and vertebrae. Pooling in blood and yellowed marrow, dissolving into sickly meres rank with unnatural decay. The skull, shattering into a pulpy mass, until nothing was left but the remnants of a man. The monster swallowed the last morsel, satiated, satisfied–for now.

But now, drowsiness overcame him, and crude sleep beckoned him. Dreamless, wakeless, the many appendages cocooning him in an indistinguishable chrysalis of unbud horror.

However, it was broken by a feminine gasp of horror. Stephen stirred, trio of eyes ignited and awake once more, writhing morass parted and cool air greeting the coarse gristle of his flesh. From below, a head crowned in ethereal starlight stood, skin trembling, her pale face further blanched by horror. The Dark Dimension still clung to her scent, and even in his monstrous cognizance did he know who it was. Clea–once wife, disciple, _friend_. That monstrosity softened and his could not help himself from mirthlessly uttering, " **Ｃｌｅａａａａａａａａａ…"** in the ragged scrape and shear of beastly vociferation. He peered longingly, possessiveness and instinct wanting her; humanity remembered love, now she was need and want and desire. Clea started at the sound of her voice, distantly reminiscent of the man much of her must have loved.

"… _Stephen?"_ she echoed, timidity and reserve traveling as her gaze found the source with frightened deliberation, trembling of her flesh the same, but it all but sagged at the sight of him. She had known it had been horrible, but to this extent–he had been grotesquely disfigured by whatever had changed him, brows furrowing upwards as she seemed so grievous upon the sight of him. Even powerful in her own right, this had been unprecedented, and even she quailed at what was thrumming so powerfully within him.

Gruesomely did he lower himself like a spider upon corded silk, her eyes daring to sight the tentacles that anchored him to the ceiling itself. They darted swiftly back to him, and blankly did he watch her, not filled with the humane recognition she had hoped for. Instead, a hand of his extended for hers, and with worrisome but gentle eyes did she touch fingertips to his, and all three eyes watched it with such concentration she felt as though nothing could break it. He shuddered upon the contact, though not before he gently, and with childish clumsiness, pulled her by her arm to inspect. So careful, so thorough. Something within made him remember this woman when all else were either enemies or prey.

" **Ｃ ｌ ｅ ａ** **,"** he rasped tonelessly again, saying her name for its own sake, as though it were the only thing he knew how to, " **ｗｈｙｙｙｙｙ ｄｉｄ ｙｏｕ ｃｏｍｅｅｅｅ** **,** **Ｃ ｌｅ ａ** **."** Incapable of principled speech, he resumed the study of her arm, so utterly fascinated with it–but when he saw her face, the beast shuddered violently again, coiling and writhing into himself; she was too beautiful. Seraphic, celestial, pure where he was something far worse than tainted. He gasped and moaned before revealing himself again, almost tentative. But her hand was still there for her to touch. He nuzzled into it, a rumbling thrum she could only assume was a purr thrumming as she scratched what remained of frazzled hair.

" _I wanted to see you, Stephen,"_ she managed softly, other hand coming to caress his face, he breathing what sounded like a relaxed exhalation. His own hands subconsciously held hers there, she smiling brokenly. " _What happened to you?"_ Her lower lip worried, tears struggling to remain at bay. He brought them closer together, looking into those eyes like starlight, closing the third eye as their foreheads touched. He gnarred a tremulous sound, gooseflesh prickling even upon skin such as this, remembering Them. He gasped, shaking his head, groaning incomprehensibly.

" **Ｃ** **-** **Ｃａｎ** **'** **ｔ ｓｓｓｓｓｓｓｓａｙｙｙ** **;** **ｔｈｅｅｅｅｅｅｙ ｗａｔｃｈｅｓｓｓｓｓｓ** **,** **ｃａｎ** **'** **ｔ ｓｓｓｓｓｓａａａａａｙ** **."** He shuddered and curled into her, forehead nudging against her chest that she held, feeling her own heart clench and beat irregularly with fear. He gasped raggedly, foul flesh bleeding from his breath, but it didn't hold enough revulsion for her. She swallowed thickly and held him close, mindful of his horns, throat closing and a broken, silent cry falling from her lips as her eyes quivered close. Tears beaded white-hot and fell in salty streams down her cheeks, sobbing into his hair, his own arms embracing her uncertainly.

" **Ｐ** **-** **Ｐｌｅａｓｓｓｓｓｓｓｓｅ ｓｓｓｓｓｓｓｔａｙ Ｃ** **-** **Ｃｌｅａａａａａａａ…"** he moaned into her chest, blinking uncertainly, she inhaling shakily. She nodded, too overcome to say anything else.

Breaking the embrasure, she watched as he rolled upon his back, arms open for her. Carefully, she let him hug her tightly, pressed against coarse and skin like an exoskeleton, reeking with foul rot and the remains of whatever he'd consumed. She was afraid, but this was the man she loved, even if not as before. She felt tentacles securely wind about her legs, comfortably there. Almost too fast did they ascend, but that didn't frighten Clea. His taloned hands stroking through the moonbeams of her hair, they became suspended upside down. An aperture could be seen, wreathed by those tentacles as it inexorably began to close and a stifling warmth enclosed them.

She breathed shakily, like a rabbit in the secure coil of the serpent, but this was Stephen. Platinum locks spilling upon the underside of his jaw, he breathed contentedly, restfully. And even though it took longer for her to relax, tensity taking forever to seep away, before long the uneasy rest of sleep finally came.

And all became enveloped in darkness.

* * *

 **Last Thoughts** : Behind every great monster, there's sometimes the person who's unfortunate enough to love him. In this case, that person is none other than Clea Strange, fresh from their divorce but still very much in love with her former husband. For him? Stephen as he is now is nothing without her. The light he cannot resist even when sunlight is more of an enemy than ever before. Here, we see her reacting to what has become of the man she loved once...and maybe still does.

Even if Marvel sporked this pairing, doesn't mean we can't have them back together in the angstiest way possible, right? :'D Because what makes for a better pairing the battling a supernaturally powerful elephant in the room?

 **~Peace, G.**


	4. Voices of Unreason

**Warning(s]** : Graphic fight scene, depictions of body horror.

* * *

He shouldn't have returned here. Like sun-spun gold did those tresses spill about the grizzled visage of Thor–no, only Odinson now, he reminisced. A bitter taste upon an embittered tongue, he wields a Mjolnir that is not truly his own. Once of another's, a falsehood, one that still scorched something foul upon his mind. But he cannot dwell upon that. Not when this was here, wresting his attention from where the heart longed to journey and to where it must go. But, must…it was too wayfaring a want, too imbued with a discordant wanderlust that feels hardly even that. They. The Black Priests. Their numbing chatter of this strange world, spoken in tandem from minds hardly living yet interconnected. Something had felt wrong in this incursion, something that had dragged the stone-weight of his feet into a noticed and ungainly trudge. Yet, his readiness to his weapon was sound, and though it wasn't truly his own, though his had been lost, such a detached familiarity made him cling to it, if not an overt desire, than it was noticed by how fingers drifted and skimmed along the shaft whilst it was holstered at his flank.

Multitudes of voices suddenly arose in the din, a chorus, an unsteady and resonant unison that reminded him. This was indeed the place. Thor recognized that easily, especially whence the last he'd heard of it. Yet…he couldn't help how he stood, nothing like this even close to the multitudes of things he'd encountered in adventures and missions past. These voices were not struck to a tune of a human conductor, or even of their own kind. They sung in a language of trills and whistles, capturing a dialect that had only been rumored of, a tongue that the Allspeak could not comprehend. It sounded above, through the corridors peaked and carved by a natural essence, a thick gloam with air thick and damp permeating and clogging the senses, Thor hardly one to be perturbed. Fear is not what thrilled him. The tensity of a preemptive strike is what corded his muscles and made brilliant azures flick about. No, he did not fear–or, at least, he did not want to.

With steps never made for stealth did he cross into an obscuring shadow that did not block his view of what appeared to an enormous amphitheater, of ghoulishly carved architecture and vaulted ceilings pinnacled high and impossibly so, this a place he had not seen upon his last encounter. Their–but that was a memory seemingly long away. Oh, and yet–nothing would prepare him for the spectacle to behold. "…Stephen Strange?" Thor's voice resonated too strongly, struck like thunder throughout, causing the Black Priests to abruptly cease their chanting, their delirious song. Thick and masculine his modulation was, unable to be stifled by silence. Especially with what he was witnessing before him.

On a terribly regal throne, mired in smog and shadow yet illumined by fearfully golden light, not of a heavenly divine, but more the last light seen before being swallowed by an abyss. Thor could only blurt as much, for he remembered the last whom had led them, whom had derailed their hive mind and replaced it with his own will. The headdress and helm were tarnished with rust and patina, worn and weathered as though by a fierce and merciless wave of seawater, calcium clogging intricacies of detail and the turquoise melding sickly like disease into the rust, all discombobulated by the royalty this unnamed monarch bore. Cloaks of a once livid and passionate crimson were dyed winedark maroon and clung heavily to the form seated there. A sleepless yet dreaming vigil, like the prophet Cthulu beneath the waves. Dead but dreaming. Something had died and was dreaming in the monster seated there. An audience of tentacles and massive appendages still swathed in murky shadow writhed restless behind, almost knowing, almost telling. The very sight of it sent Thor reeling in shock–who…was this phantom?

"Ｃｏｏｏｏｏｍｅｅｅｅｅ ｎｏ ｆｕｕｕｒｔｈｅｅｅｅｒｒｒｒｒｒｒ…"

The voice that spoke thence stilled him, made him pause with such tensity he could feel his very heart pound against his chest. The massive eldritch abomination knew he was here, could do so without even so much as glancing blindly in that direction. Stephen arose from his throne, and Thor finally felt it. That fear. Paralysis, not borne of a true fear, but some deep and primal that all living things feared. The abyss. "You–you can't be Stephen! I refuse to believe it, monster! Unhand me! Let me free!" Thor bellowed with great and thunderous loudness, gritting his teeth with skin flushing red. But oh, he couldn't. His limbs refused before the presence of such a monster.

"Ｉ ｗａａａａａａｒｎｅｅｅｅｅｅｄ ｙｏｏｏｏｏｏｕｕｕｕｕｕｕ," Stephen maundered in his monstrous and guttural intonation, rising and striding towards Thor with his tentacles gamboling in lieu like legs themselves, cloak of levitation seeming weakened, unable to move of its own accord. Stephen came with such closeness, such a terrible stride that one might not even expect it of it. This was no longer the Sorcerer Supreme. The Vishanti had abandoned him, and the Sanctum was no longer his to dwell within. It was across dimensions and to fulfill the wonts of new masters did he abide. And their voices screamed upon him, even through the chaotic chorus of the Black Priests that encircled above in their wide and hypnotic radius. Fervently, faster–swirling dervishes of untraceable speed.

A jarring bolt of lightning tore with abandon throughout, and it struck the former Sorcerer.

Calamitous, it bolted and strayed upon him, riveting his insides that became ignited and phosphorescent from within, illuminating igneous the skeletal frame and innards inhuman. Stephen screamed with a thousand voices, ricocheting from the helm of a head that shook with agonized frenzy, talons clutching whilst the Thundering Prince's cuckold was freed, he standing and knowing that a battle was inevitable now. "What has become of you? Why are you like this, Stephen? Answer me!" They were both afraid. One who didn't know why and another who couldn't remember.

"Ｉ ＤＯＮ'Ｔ ＫＮＯＷ Ｉ ＤＯＮ'Ｔ ＫＮＯＷ Ｉ ＤＯＮ'Ｔ ＫＮＯＷ!"

Stephe screamed with such agony that several massive tentacles flailed with abandon and were enough to brutally strafe the Thunderer, the Asgardian barely able to halt the collision as he was impeded and slammed into an opposite wall, the Black Priests' chorus now rising to a deafening cacophony, Stephen snarling and bristling hotly as anger and rage and wrath poured and scaled him red hot. The helm was torn, and he roared his fury, jaws practically unhinging as his very throat flamed with an inner inferno. Thor blearily began to recover before he saw Stephen gallop towards him in all roaring fury, upon all fours and gamboling before a hand seized a crushing hold upon his skull, the Thunderer screaming as it became greater as he was suspended off the ground.

"ＩＤＯＮ'ＴＫＮＯＷＩＤＯＮ'ＴＫＮＯＷＩＤＯＮ'ＴＫＮＯＷ!"

He tried to remember, but his mind only hurled back chaos and discord that pained him! The Alizarine King was blindsided by a great hit by Thor, charged with enormous volts of lightning. They ignited the Alizarine King so intensely the he was consumed within the bolts, an outline of black and the stink of flesh curdling and burning as he raised his limbs in dreaded exaltation as it rocketed throughout him to the very core, plumes of thick smoke coiling from his incinerating flesh. It lasted for moments too long and drawn before Thor was freed, Stephen slumping to the ground in a seemingly defeated morass. Thor breathed with labored breath, sagging even from such a battle.

He strayed near yet afar, swallowing in such a parched throat, gazing long and forlorn upon the defeated and seemingly lifeless slump. "What has become of you?" he asked aloud and again, this time rhetorical and almost grieving. Brows furrowing, expression drawn by a hollow and ironic smile, Thor laughed in shock aloud. "Nay–what has become of us?" What…had happened. Mjolnir felt threateningly heavy in his grasp, Thor staring long and hard at it, brows furrowed and waiting in shocked anticipation.

A deep rumble emitted wrathfully from the Alizarine King, he rising with precipitous deliberation and Thor froze at it, turning slowly to avail to the sight of those trio of hellion eyes, fangs torn open and snarling. Such slowness, he was more akin to a rabbit mesmerized by a crouching snake ready to strike.

With such speed that he could not hope to deflect, Stephen lunged at him in a hateful roar encumbered with vengeance, power and discord bristling and all Thor saw before he became swallowed by a purest chaos.

To Be Continued…


	5. Contain the Chaos

**Warning(s]** : Fight scene

* * *

Malevolence. It roiled with a stormy surrender, bringing with it the whippets of a forlorn and lost desire for her. Taken. The night had been bursting with a warmth he hadn't felt in what felt like eons, holding the woman brighter than stars, more radiant than holiness, more precious than any he'd held to his eviscerated heart. The only one remembered in the toil and tumult of a transformation that left him aghast with bereaved and winsome lost, a venomous pith in the blackened rind of his heart. Without. Without. In this deep and disturbed slumber, the Alizarine King knew this wouldn't last. For Clea had gone, had disappeared from his sight and eye, without a trace. As though what had transpired had been naught but a dream. Yet, the monster was sick with desire, it rocketing so hotly in him that it felt as though a great plague were upon him.

Coiling extrusions loosed and his cocoon of absolute defense bloomed to allow him to descend with slowness to the barren, chilled ground below damp with refuse and rot from the meal made the night before. And his mind was thickly clouded with her scent, with the sensation of porcelain flesh and pale hair and her ethereal warmth, knowing this it had been no dream, no mystical and heartbroken wanting. He growled temperamentally, unease drawling the craven sound as claws gouged into the concrete of the corridor, blinking sleep from the igneous orbs of his eyes.

Someone was coming. Stephen bristled and his spine arched and straightened, protruding vertebrae waning a faint luminescence with a sort of display of warning aggression, his power culminating with jaws slowly unhinging and displaying more of the florescence that ought frighten away the lesser. A voice railed in his mind, Stephen hunkering down as the Great Ones relayed commands to him, a simple word translating in a former tongue:

ＤＥＳＴＲＯＹ

Stephen recoiled in agony from it, shrinking so small into himself that was almost too much for a body that could still only be contorted so far. His masters. They spoke, knew he was prisoner. And this couldn't be, for he needed freedom to achieve their aims. His mouth gaped blankly for several moments, akin to a fish stagnant in the water and gasping for breath. Destroy–they were keeping her from him…they were keeping his BELOVED from him! Malice overtook him now, the light from within bursting from its timidity as it seared rage-hot in him, almost igniting his body white in its heat.

" _Whoa, big guy, just–stay right there, buddy."_

Stephen snarled menacingly at the voice, dragging talons through the steel to utter a hoarse, withering screech as he neared, seeing a hovering metal suit coil into itself for a moment. Stark himself was on the scene, Stephen observed with fiendish delight, even if this wasn't voiced in the host of his mind. For he was forgetting language far too quickly, except in the excruciating moments when he spoke to her. To his beloved for whom was the only one worth clinging to his scarce remnants of humanity for.

Iron Man finally recovered, the trail of his traipse rocketing past as wind gusted past Stephen in the wake of his passage, mere outlines of his eyes and the heat of his rockets indicating the billionaire's presence. Stephen came with monstrous instinct, a ray beam of raw power incinerating the air, Iron Man just barely dodging it.

" _What the hell–"_

A new orifice opened, glowing at its rim where the blast had struck, Stephen tensing and bristling intensely, and in Tony's mistaken fixation, one of Stephen's larger appendages struck out and pummeled Iron Man down, Stephen clumsily galloping over in the mess of tentacles and arms, seizing Iron Man immediately and savagely biting into his torso, the audible crunch of creaking and collapsing metal sounding alarms as JARVIS rallied Tony from his stupor. Talons screeched as they tore through, pulverizing remnants as the former Sorcerer Supreme went at him like a beast to raw meat.

" **ᗰY ᗩᑭOᒪOGIEᔕ, ᔕIᖇ, ᗷᑌT I ᗰᑌᔕT TᗩKE ᑕOᑎTᖇOᒪ ᖴOᖇ ᗩ ᗰOᗰEᑎT."**

JARVIS' voice sounded in clear tenor, Stephen pausing for a moment, genuinely mystified at the disembodied voice before a hand cannon was invoked and fired point blank in Stephen's face. The monster reeled back with an inhuman roar, bellowing painfully as Iron Man was finally allowed the slip, likely burning Stephen as he propelled violently from the vice. Coarse hide was scorched, singing flesh burning Stephen's nostrils before he recovered, wheeling chaotically about before he halted fiercely upon sighting Iron Man and raising his hackles and intending for offense once more.

" _Alright, subdue, don't kill; subdue, don't kill–remind me again why we need to save this thing? This isn't Stephen Strange. Just, vaguely looks like him. Even so, his beard isn't as nice as mine–"_

Tony's static prattling as cut short as Stephen bolted himself the ceiling in an inhuman rush, guising his own body temperature, impairing Iron Man's sensors and preventing him from detection. The darkness occluded him from being found all the more, but unfortunately for Stephen, Tony wasn't exactly alone. He'd be finished if he had been, after all.

The battle cry of a certain Norse god rang out in fierce clarity, lightning charged in such dim confines as raging titian flickered upon ranging and honing upon the thundering god, Thor standing tall and fearless as lightning charged and danced upon Stephen's form, electrocuting him in the process as the monster shuddered erratically and screamed, rumpling to a charred morass to the ground in a loud and harsh clangor.

Iron Man sailed for Thor once the offense was finished, hand raised as he assessed the beast, then nodding finitely, sighing in dragging exhaustion. A small dart was launched from some small compartment on the suit, pinching into Stephen's hide as his body lurched once before sagging again, truly sedated. Thor and Tony breathed dual sighs of relief.

" _So…it is done? Will he be contained?"_ Thor queried lowly, turning to the shorter man, azure eyes static bright in the dark.

Tony's brows furrowed pensively, head dropping as a hand came to the back of his neck, lips grimacing within the helmet. " _Let's hope. I mean, did you see what he was capable of? The most powerful magic user in the world is…_ _ **this**_ _. I think praying is all we can do at this point, Thor."_ Breath chattered with a rattle through the speakers of his suit. " _Alright…let's just get him out of here."_


	6. The Contents of Pandora's Box

**Warning(s]** : None

* * *

Mist she was, mist she would become. Ephemeral, clear–Clea. Dully did he sink upon the ground with titian flares staring into that void. He could hear her. When his mind was akimbo and without consciousness, Stephen could hear her. His salvation, and how she came to him. Entwined in starlight, ethereal and encompassing, her visage a vision of perfection as the Alizarine King embraced her without affliction in the waking world. He was dreaming. She sang to him, a melody beautiful and divine. A lullaby in the language of the Dark Dimension, solar ether billowing through her hair, the pale strands moving of their own accord alike starlight. He didn't care. Gnarled and coarse hide encompassed her, a star being cradled in cosmic dust and particles and dark matter, she sinking into him without remorse and he feeling the greatest sense of sanctity.

But like a star, she soon enfolded into a pure orb of light, the King starting as she did. Before he could reason enough sense to scrabble for her, she was gone, drifting on the sea of his outer consciousness and drifting akin to a comet in her slow retreat. Stephen wanted to scream out for her, to claw and pursue her in all his blind and jealous possession. Stephen felt as though he were choking as the air suddenly became packed from his lungs, like drowning in human water. Down, down, he was swept, and deeper still would he sink.

A watery thump filled his mind as Stephen blearily opened his eyes, a slim jettison of bubbles wobbling their way to the surface as he exhaled. Static, crackled, more bubbles escaping through a mask obscuring half his face. Stephen attempted a snarl but all he received as an answer was a blare of static from his own exhalation. The view before him was watery, barely able to muster enough motor control to even elicit a twitch of his digits. Sedated. In the thin memory that he still possessed, the neurosurgeon from that faraway, past life answered for him. He'd been sedated and suspended in this…solution. Perhaps it was part of what made him light and paralyzed.

Two silhouettes came into view, Stephen recognizing them; did this state make his mind lucid enough for the Sorcerer Supreme to remember himself. Deliberately did he manage enough motion to bump brows to the glass, horns eliciting faint friction from the cylindrical holding container. Stephen attempted to hiss, but sleep was too heavy upon his senses. He couldn't move much as it was, even if his tentacles moved independently of his will, it wasn't enough.

Silent he sank, faint screech elicited as he did, letting sleep claim him.

 **For it was the only place he'd find** _ **her**_ **again.**


End file.
